Hello! My name is Lauren and I’m proud to be the newest member of the growing Collective Results (CR) team!
Prior to working at CR, I worked in hospital research labs and public health. I actually started my public health career just a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic began. And let me tell you – what a way to start a career! I definitely earned the right to add “experience working in a fast paced environment” to my resume. As part of our COVID-19 response, I had the opportunity to work as a liaison with many community organizations working on the front lines of the pandemic and I gained a lot of respect for the work that they do. Although I’ve made the decision to leave public health, I’m excited to get the chance to work with similar agencies once again and help them continue to do important work.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to reflect on what I bring to the table at CR and what my goals are for the year ahead. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve worked with many community organizations, primarily in the areas of substance use, youth health, and congregate living settings. From my time in public health, I’ve learned the importance of taking a whole systems approach to tackling issues. To me, that means breaking down silos and prioritizing collaboration. Additionally, I encourage organizations to consider the social determinants of health in their work to improve outcomes for their clients. I believe that these principles apply to many different sectors and I hope to bring my public health lens to the variety of projects that I work on at CR.
Ever since my first epidemiology class in undergrad, I’ve had an interest in population health analytics. When data is utilized effectively, it can tell a story, provide meaningful insights, and help inform important decisions. During my time at public health, I discovered a new tool to add to my data analytics toolbox – dashboards! Dashboards are a powerful tool to visualize data trends in a format that is customizable and easy to digest. They are also a great outlet for my creative side. Growing up I loved arts and crafts, from painting to scrapbooking and everything in between. In fact, my favourite part of writing book reports in elementary school was drawing art for the title pages. So it’s no surprise that I enjoy designing knowledge translation materials such as infographics and dashboards today. One of my goals for my work at CR is to help community organizations tell their own story in creative ways.
One last thing that you should know about me is that I love learning and trying new things. After all, how do you know if you don’t like something unless you try it? For example, last year I had the opportunity to travel to Ireland, a place that wasn’t really on my travel bucket list. I also knew that I would be travelling solo for most of the trip, which is something that I hadn’t really done before. If my selfie at the Giant’s Causeway hasn’t already given it away, I decided to take the leap and go for it! I ended up learning a lot of rich history by travelling all throughout the country (castle by castle) and making my way up to Northern Ireland. I also learned a lot about myself during this trip and gained a new sense of independence. Going forward, I’ve decided to take on as many learning opportunities as possible! I’ve already learned a lot during my first few weeks at CR. Another one of my goals is to learn more about strategic planning, an area where I have yet to gain extensive experience in. Many of my colleagues at CR are experts in strategic planning and I hope to learn how to help organizations develop their own strategic plans.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any tricky data that you need help decoding (or if you have any travel recommendations – near or far)!